The Comoian: Gerrymander this!

If you’ve been living under a rock or don’t feel the need to give the Tribune money (because no one reads The Missourian anyway) just to bypass their pay-wall in order to read some crummy stories about this god-forsaken hole in the middle of America we call “CoMo,” then you have no idea about the serpentine deceptions about to come down from our own city council, a council we supposedly elected. Yes, believe it or not, the self-serving decepticons at city hall are jerry-rigging the lines that divide wards to suit their own purposes and maybe even for a few developers ready to rape and pillage the center city for profit in the form of a Starbucks on your front lawn. [Redacted].

Here’s the deal: Reapportionment comes along every ten years, side-by-side with the cicadas. The city council gets together some ideas for moving the ward boundaries for various and sometimes arbitrary reasons. They then ask a few dedicated citizens to look over the plans and make a recommendation. From there, the city votes and we have new wards. Great. Democracy works again and we’re all happy.

Well, almost.

You see, 4th Ward councilman Daryl Dudley tried an end-around by submitting his plan (Plan “D” for “[redacted],” I believe) that would conveniently take the neighborhoods who didn’t like him enough during the last election (12% support) and kick them into the 1st Ward. Of course, Dudley is a giving sort. His plan also takes a bite out of the 3rd Ward and combines it with the 1st as well. These neighborhoods are known as Benton-Stephens and they didn’t like their councilman (Cesspool Kespohl) either.

Moving voting boundaries around in order to fix your re-election bid is called “gerrymandering.” In my neighborhood, it’s called “being a dick.”

That’s not all, folks. See, the neighborhoods that have been proposed to move in Plan D([Redacted]) happen to surround downtown, or “The District” as some like to call it. What this would do would consolidate the representation for the center of town into one ward, the 1st. “Consolidation is bitchin’!” you say? Nope. Not in this case. The representation on city council would go from three to one for those living in and around downtown. The people who would be making decisions for that part of town would be those who don’t even live there. They just go down there during daylight hours to shop and look at the punks and black people.

As you can imagine, folks is pissed. They organized themselves and bothered old people for their signatures all weekend in order to recall Dudley with an opportunity to boot him out of office – an office he only won by 2%. The thinking was that if people who currently live in the 4th Ward signed the petition before being shipped off to the 1st, said signatures would still count.

If I were sexist, I’d say that Dudley was gettin’ [redacted]-slapped and notarized like Iowa State on Saturday. But I am not sexist and I’d just say that he will have to do some answering once those signatures are turned in.

In the meantime, upset at the prospect of Dudley’s gerrymandering, a whole lot of people with email addresses in the 4th Ward wrote to Mayor McCheese McDavid and demanded that the council choose the less-offensive Plan E (as chose by the committee) which would generally keep things stable in the 4th. I guess the mayor was scared when he figured that Plan E was supported 50:1 in those emails, causing him to switch his support from D to E.

Dudley and his plan get [redacted]-slapped again.

Now, the good people of the 4th Ward will wait. They’ll turn in those signatures, walk past the #OccupyCoMo protesters (dirty hippies), and sit through a whole lot of boring in hopes to see Plan D go down in defeat. Then, there will be much rejoicing in Professorville. Gerrymandering will be blocked and democracy restored…

Or Plan D (or even the semi-gerrymandered Plan A) will be passed. I suspect that Dudley will have to take his on a special election day, the mayor may also be in trouble, and the greedy developers of this town will win again.

[Redacted]! I hate politics!

Either way, keep an eye/ear open tonight to see what the council decides. Then, get ready for a campaign in the 4th that will put the GOP debates to shame. Maybe things just got a lot more interesting around here.

The Comoian is a new feature on the Collective meant to provide another perspective on Columbia not currently present in our pages. This perspective – like all the opinions on this website – are not representative of The CoMo Collective, its editors, nor its writers. Take it for what it is. Leave angry comments in the space below. – Zac

October 25, 2011 – Due to a few reader complaints and some sense of decency, we’ve decided to clean up The Comoian’s language a bit. The message is still all hers, but we’ll step in and redact the more offensive parts. – Zac

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[…] Yet, she really hasn’t taken on too many real issues. Sure, her redacted comment on the gerrymandering of Columbia Wards was actually pretty good, even if it was anonymous. But, since then she’s become the woman […]